Comments Off on Second group of researchers starting their studies at CrossWorlds

The CrossWorlds team of researchers during the workshop on April 22nd, 2015

On April 1st, the second group of researchers started their studies at CrossWorlds. The nine new colleagues now work in the offices at Reichenhainer Str. 70 as the previous group moved out. All of the twelve researchers of the first group are still working at CrossWorlds, but are now officially associated members.

During a one-day workshop on April 22nd, the CrossWorlds veterans passed the baton to their new colleagues. Two additional graduates start their work at CrossWorlds today, and another researcher will join in june, bringing the number of the second group also up to twelve.

We enthusiastically look forward to yet another three years filled with fruitful discussions, interdisciplinary exchange and exciting publications!

The staff pages will be updated very soon with the profiles of the second group of researchers.

Several authors asked us if we could extend the submission deadline so they could finish up their submission properly. You ask – we listen. The new submission deadline is April 14, 2015. We are still looking forward to your submissions!

Comments Off on Call for Papers: Special issue on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Social Technologies

We are inviting submissions to the i-com Journal on Interactive and Cooperative Media for a special issue on “Interdisciplinary approaches to social technologies”. This issue will be guest-edited by Maximilian Eibl, Peter Ohler, and Daniel Pietschmann. All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer-review process. The submission deadline is March 31, 2015. We are looking forward to your submissions!

Dr. Kiyoshi Kiyokawa visited CrossWorlds on december 11th and gave two very inspiring talks about Head Mounted Display Technologies for Augmented Reality and Future Directions of Augmented Reality Display Technologies. Besides the crossworlds team, the audience also included interested colleagues from other departments as well as many students.

We thank all helpers, especially for the catering and tech support. Furthermore a big thank you to the VR/ AR team members Peter Schulz, Florian Polster, Daniel Lohmeier von Laer and Jesper Bellenbaum.

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The MOOC with additional learning materials will be available as soon as possible. For further information please contact Crossworlds Member Steve Funke. Abstracts for the talks can be found after the jump.

From 16th-19th of november the ACM conference for Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS) took place in Dresden. Besides the lectures the event included a poster & demo session, in which CrossWorlds members Michael Storz and Kalja Kanellopoulos presented their second tabletop ‘comforTable’.
One of the highlights of the conference was Joachim Sauter’s closing keynote. In his inspiring presentation the director of the renowned design agency ART+COM gave insights in their magnificent work with interactive surfaces and showed a number of best practice examples. Concerning the development of new technologies he emphasized: “If you work with technologies you can only predict the future if you work interdisciplinary. People have to be open to leave their fields and work together with others.” Furthermore Sauter stressed the narrative potential of interactive surfaces, linking interaction design to composition and poetry. Putting the importance of briefing and re-briefing during the process of technological development into focus, he pointed out: “All of our ideas are already in our minds. You just have to open the door.”

Comments Off on Exhibition MS Wissenschaft closes with 90.000 visitors

MS Wissenschaft @Linz,Austria

September 28th the exhibition “Digital Unterwegs” on the ship MS Wissenschaft finally came to an end. In total it had 90.000 visitors, among them 480 school classes. The ship stopped in 38 german and austrian cities.

CrossWorlds researchers Kalja Kanellopoulos and Michael Storz contributed a multitouch table with applications for up to six players. The support staff reported us that the table was one of the most loved and most used exhibits in the exhibition. They also stated that the exhibit fostered interaction between people who didn’t know each other before and that despite its heavy usage the exhibit was still one of the easiest to maintain. On two of the last stops in Deggendorf and Regensburg we were able to conduct a user study, which will give us further insights into the mechanics and courses of action of playful tabletop collaboration.

Despite the fact, that we are still working on the detailled results of our study, it became clear, that this project was a great success and all the hard work and support for this exhibition was worthwhile.

The table is now in refurnishment and will be presented on November 17th at the Demosession at the ACM ITS conference in Dresden.

We visited the MS Wissenschaft in Linz on our only support trip to fix a broken USB-Hub.

A view in the exhibition to the entrance. Table is on the lefthand side.

90.000 visitors leave some marks. But apart from some issues with our camera boxes, the overall construction proved to be very robust.

After a week of the usual troubles while working in a half-way boxed-up office-space, the CrossWorlds Team finally is moving into their new habitat, half a World away aCross the street. If you want to find us, remember to look into the A-Wing of Reichenhainer Str. 70, Rooms 312 through 317.

The Research Training Group "Connecting Virtual and Real Social Worlds" addresses the increase in digitization and its resulting virtualization of processes, communication, environments, and finally of the human counterparts. The nature and the degree of virtualization vary significantly, and they depend considerably on the context of application. In addition, media-mediated communication is always restricted in comparison with real-world communication.
Our goal is to overcome the current constraints of media-mediated communication. In doing so, we will study which new ways of interaction and communication are offered by the connection of virtual and real social worlds in comparison with the experience of immediate real interaction and communication.
The research program subdivides the connection between virtual and real social environments into the fields of: communication, emotions, sensomotorics, and learning. Research in these areas is performed within interdisciplinary research networks consisting of computer scientists and social scientists on a doctoral, postdoctoral, and on the supervisory level.
The qualification program is based on the objective of the Research Training Group, which is explicitly focused on joint technology-oriented and social-scientific-oriented media research. Seminars and workshops, some of them to be organized by the fellows, are focused on the research topics of the fellows. Furthermore, tutorials repare the fellows for the challenges of the national and international scientific community. The qualification program is completed by visits of designated guest scholars.